The Last Match (16 page)

“Cash,” he said, with a conspiratorial wink. “No checks.”

“That’s very generous of you, sir,” I said. “But I can’t positively guarantee anything. My job is simply to scout the field, select a promising prospect like yourself, accept a deposit as evidence of good faith and forward my recommendation to headquarters. The contracts are all drawn up there. The most I could do for you—”

“Your recommendation is the basis of the contract, ain’t it?”

“Normally, yes, sir. But—”

“That’s good enough for me, son. Let’s make it fifteen hundred, and no arguments. I’ll send it over to your hotel in an ahnvelope this afternoon.”

He did, too. I left town without even going back to bag him for the deposit he was burning to give me in addition to the bribe. When the marks start sending their money to your hotel in ahnvelopes, there’s no flavor in a flim-flam. It’s more fun shooting fish in a barrel.

The snappy convertible made me too conspicuous, too easy to track. I got rid of it and traveled by common carrier: planes, trains, buses, taxis. Getting rid of the car gave me a brief inexplicable feeling of relief, as if I had just put down a heavy burden. I didn’t understand the feeling at the time and I still don’t. But I was restless, footloose, irritable, bad company even for myself. I wanted something I didn’t have, without knowing what it was.

One gray Sunday morning I found myself on the Baltimore waterfront, for no particular reason. Baltimore is a depressing town at best, even when the weather isn’t gloomy, and I had my own private stock of megrims to keep me company besides. Mooching along the wharves wrapped in my private cloud of gloom, I breathed the salt-oil-paint-slush-garbage odor of the harbor and was suddenly hit with this overwhelming
saudade
for—something. I still didn’t know what the something was but I craved it. I had to have it.
Saudade
is a Portuguese word I didn’t know then but learned later in the same way I had learned my first words of Arabic; in the can. The word doesn’t translate exactly, but it’s close to nostalgia, homesickness,
mal du pays, cafard,
all those except that you can also have
saudade
for a plate of ham and eggs or a dill pickle. You can even have
saudade
for nothing in particular, as I had then. What it really was, or may have been, was a kind of
anti-saudade
for Baltimore and the pedestrian life I had been leading. I was in a trap and I wanted out.

There was an old freighter, medium-sized and senescent but clean and well painted, tied up to the wharf near where I was strolling. She had the Blue Peter flying and a couple of tugs standing by, ready to go. Her gangplank was still out and her lines still fast, with men waiting on the wharf to cast off. Others were on deck ready to take the lines in. Otherwise no action except between a couple of guys who looked like they might be ship’s officers. One, wearing a greasy white cap, was standing at the head of the gangplank yelling up at the other, on the bridge. The one on the bridge, whose white cap was dingy rather than greasy, was yelling right back. Between them they were profaning the Sabbath with some of the crispest blasphemy I had heard in a long time. Nobody was around to appreciate them except me and the guys standing by the lines. They looked bored, as if they’d heard it all before.

The guy at the head of the gangplank caught sight of me first.

“Hey, you! On the wharf!” he yelled. “Come over here!”

I said, “Who, me?”

“Who the hell do you think I’m talking to? Myself? Get over here before I come down there and kick your ass for you!”

“Coming, sergeant,” I said, forgetting for the moment that I was no longer in the army. The words and music were so familiar. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing, yet. You will. Do you want to ship out?”

Coming as it did on the heels of my attack of
saudade,
it caught me with my guard down. I said, “Man, there’s nothing I’d rather do more.” I didn’t mean I was
ready
to ship out; only that, the way I felt, the idea appealed strongly to me.

“Can you oil a triple-expansion engine?”

“Well, I haven’t worked at it lately, but given a little time to get my hand in—”

“Shut up! Can you fire a Scotch boiler?”

“Well, I haven’t done that either lately. But—”

“Shut up! You can wipe, can’t you? Any dumb son of a bitch can wipe.”

“I guess I can wipe, then. However—”

“Shut up! Just my luck to draw a goddamn ladyfinger.

How long will it take you to get your gear and your papers?” “My—?”

“Shut up! That’s too long. I’ll give you forty-five minutes, not a minute over. If you’re not here ready to turn to in forty-five minutes, I’ll have your balls for breakfast. Now
move,
goddamn it!”

“Yes, sir!”

As soon as I was out of sight of the freighter’s deck I moved more slowly, of course. No profaner of the Sabbath in a greasy cap could order me around like that, by golly. Who did he think he was, anyway? (He was the First Assistant Engineer, that’s who he was. On a steam freighter the First, if not God below decks, is his Vicar. God is the Chief.) But then I got to thinking, about this and that and the other thing, and I speeded up again. What the hell, why not? At least I’d be going
somewhere,
even if I didn’t know where it was. Instead of doomed to Baltimore, MD, on a gloomy Sunday.

I made it back in forty-two minutes flat. Running, but as light as a soap bubble on my feet, buoyed by a wonderful feeling of freedom and escape. I had all my portable possessions in a suitcase, my papers in my pocket. The two guys in the white caps, now joined by another pair, were still yelling dirty words at each other. As soon as I hove in sight they all turned loose on me, piping me aboard with as warm a welcome as I have ever received anywhere. Somebody began yelling orders, winches rattled, lines began coming in, the tugs hooted signals at each other. We were on our way, wherever it might lead. I felt wonderful.

A few initial complications arose in connection with my new employment. It turned out that the First wasn’t ordering me to get my passport, vaccination certificate and the other things when he sent me off after my papers. What he meant was my seaman’s book, union card and such. He almost went through the ceiling, I mean overhead, when he found out I didn’t have any.

“A fink!” he yelled. “A goddamn fink you worked off on me! My God, the unions will strike the ship so hard her seams will open! You scab son of a bitch, if I’d known what was worming its way into my engine-room—”

I cut in to remind him that I hadn’t wormed my way into anything; that he’d practically kicked my ass into his engine-room, promising to have my balls for breakfast if I wasn’t ready to turn to in forty-five minutes, remember? I said I was sorry I was a fink, but I hadn’t realized that I was going to qualify as one. I thought he just wanted some dumb son of a bitch who could wipe. A cool, rational summarizing of the facts.

It didn’t tone him down any. But he did go into conspiracy with the captain, and between them they somehow came up with a seaman’s book and other documents to prove I was Thomas Polack, a paid-up member in good standing of the Firemen, Wipers, Watertenders and Oilers Union of America. I don’t know where the papers came from, or what had happened to the original Thomas Polack, but I signed on under that name. I could have been Thomas A. Edison as far as the union steward aboard the freighter cared. As long as my dues were paid up. They remained paid up during the entire period of my career in the U.S. merchant marine. Two months and four days. Enough for a lifetime, believe me.

Have you ever been a fireman on an oil-burning freighter? The job of night watchman in a Quaker graveyard is mad riotous living by comparison. I made fireman after a week as wiper because the wiper they moved up to replace the fireman they moved up to replace the oiler who jumped ship in Baltimore was too dumb to handle the fire-room by himself. That means pretty God-awful dumb. Everything is under automatic control and self-tending except for a few small chores at the beginning of each watch like cleaning the oil-filters and the burners; maybe twenty minutes work if you drag it out. The rest of the time you do nothing at all except look at pressure gauges every now and then to see that everything is normal. It always is. Four hours on, eight hours off, night and day, seven days a week, from here to eternity; nobody to talk to, no reading material allowed, no portable radios because they wouldn’t work inside a ship’s steel hull even if you were allowed to have one on watch, which you’re not. Solitary confinement. In two months and four days I was stir-crazy.

What saved a part of my sanity was the fact that many of the black gang were South Americans. The ship was headed for the west coast of South America by way of the Canal. After my first few watches in the fire-room I knew I’d be leaving it at the first opportunity. It seemed like a good idea to polish up my Spanish, which was rudimentary; the kind you pick up in Tangier while habitually speaking another couple of languages more often and more readily. I spent all my time off-watch trading English lessons—and cigarettes, when necessary—for Spanish lessons from the off-watch black gang, all my dead time below making up new sentences and phrases to learn as soon as I was topside again. A crash course like that, complete dedication of effort for a couple of uninterrupted months, is as good as a hitch in the
violon
for results. I spoke pretty good South American before I ever laid foot on the South American continent, or even eyes. Good enough to sucker the simple native with anyway, I was pretty sure.

I planned first to jump ship in Panama and look around for action there among the military personnel in the Zone. (Soldiers aren’t too bright or they wouldn’t be soldiers. Not professionals, anyway.) I couldn’t make Panama. We never tied up there. We were either out in the stream waiting our turn at the Canal or making the transit all the time. Buena Ventura, the first Pacific port we hit after that, was hot, sweaty and unpromising for a man of my achievements; a banana-port. You can’t con a bunch of bananas. The next port, Guayaquil, was the same only sweatier. I stuck it out as far as Callao, the end of my career in the merchant marine. There I did a pierhead jump, came down running for dry land and, as it turned out, within a whisker of running right into the Peruvian
calabozo.
Not because of the pierhead jump, and not on account of Nemesis. From sheer bonehead stupidity.

Callao is the most important seaport in Peru. It isn’t much of a place in itself, outside of docks, wharves, warehouses, whorehouses and the other incidentals. But the port is only a few miles from Lima, the country’s capital and largest city, and a
tranvia
connects the two. You can get up to Lima from Callao in a matter of minutes and disappear in the crowd in less than that. That’s what I did. I had to leave behind everything I couldn’t wear or stuff in my pockets without looking too obvious when I went ashore. It cost me a suitcase and a few other possessions, but they were a small price to pay for freedom from the black gang; a release to which I was not entitled, strictly speaking, until the ship got back to Baltimore. The First would be yelling for my balls on toast and the captain would hate me because his ship would have to pay a fine for leaving me behind. They had my sympathy, but my servitude no longer. I was free,
free, free!

Lima held promise, I could sense it right away. Of course I was in the country illegally, without a Peruvian visa in my passport and with no visible means of support, but no matter. I didn’t plan to go anyplace where an examination of passports might be called for. As for means of support, mine were what you could call invisible but well tried.

I tied up with a guy, an American, who was trying to make a living out of the Spanish Prisoner bunco but not doing too well at it. We got together in a bar that was popular with the resident
gringo
colony. He panhandled me for a beer and a sandwich. He was on the shorts, although not, as I learned in time, as short as all that. He was saving what money he had for postage. When he had got around the beer and sandwich he tried for another handout; a hundred
soles,
pally? I said I might, just possibly might, hold still for a hundred
sol
bite if he told the right kind of tale for it.

He was a tall, skinny redhead with freckles, name of Al Schmidt. Smitty. He’d come to Lima the same way I had, by jumping ship. At heart he was a frustrated writer, always talking about the great novel he was going to turn out as soon as he could get down to it. In the meantime one of his few assets was a typewriter, a Smith Corona portable. He hadn’t hocked it because he was using it to write come-on letters to a sucker-list he had acquired in some way he didn’t choose to talk about. All the addresses on it were in the U.S.A., mostly in small towns but never two in the same town. It looked like a good enough list. He just wasn’t getting the responses from it he thought he should be getting.

“Damn it, Curly,” he said, after we had felt each other out long enough to recognize a fellow member of the brotherhood. “I can’t figure it. I ought to be getting at least a nibble from one in five. I’m not even pulling one in ten. Or one in fifteen. It’s discouraging. I just can’t figure it.”

“Let me see the letter,” I said.

He showed it to me.

The Spanish Prisoner swindle is an old one. The original letter was supposed to have been written by a prisoner in a Spanish penitentiary, therefore the name. Any country will do, as long as it’s reasonably distant from the marks you send the letter to. Smitty’s read something like the following (I’m recreating it here not from memory but because it always reads pretty much the same, subject to local variations):

Dear Sir:

A person who knows you and who has spoken very highly about you has made me entrust you with a very delicate matter on which depends the entire future of my dear daughter as well as my very existence.

I am in prison, sentenced for bankruptcy, and 1 wish to know if you are willing to help me save the sum of
$285,000 U.S.
Cy. which I have in bank bills hidden in a secret compartment of a trunk that is now deposited in a customhouse in the United skates.

As soon as I send you some undeniable evidence, it will be necessary for you to come here and pay the small expenses incurred in connection with my legal process so the embargo on my suitcases will be lifted. One of these suitcases contains a baggage-check that was given to me at the time of checking my trunk for North America. The trunk contains the sum mentioned above.

To compensate for your trouble I will give you the
THIRD
PART
OF
SAID
SUM
.
My darling daughter, aged
19,
a former Miss Peru, will accompany you to North America to assist you in claiming this award.

Fearing that this letter may not come to your hands, I will not sign my name until I hear from you and then I will entrust you with my whole secret. For the time being I am only signing, “A.”

Due to serious reasons of which you will know later, please reply
VIA
AIR
MAIL
or
WIRE
.
I beg you to treat this matter with the most absolute reserve and discretion.

I cannot receive your reply directly in this prison, so in case you accept my proposition, please air mail your letter to a person of my entire trust who will deliver it to me safely and rapidly. This is his name and address:

Juan Lopez

Calle Marañon
14

Lima, Peru